Natasha Wimmer

Natasha Wimmer (born 1973^[1]) is an American translator best known for her translations of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and The Savage Detectives from Spanish into English.^[2]

Natasha Wimmer grew up in Iowa.^[3] She learned Spanish in Spain, where she spent four years growing up. She studied Spanish literature at Harvard University.^[2]

She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and children.^[4]

Her first job after graduating was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant and then managing editor.^[1] While working there, Wimmer produced her first translation, the Dirty Havana Trilogy by Cuban novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.^[2]

Wimmer then worked at Publishers Weekly, before leaving to work on Roberto Bolaño's books full-time.^[1] On her work in publishing and translation, Wimmer has said: "I had decided in college that I would never be a fiction writer, but I knew I wanted to be as close to books as I could. Publishing was one way, and translating turned out to be a better way for me."^[1]

She has also translated Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's The Language of Passion, The Way to Paradise, and Letters to a Young Novelist; and Marcos Giralt Torrente's Father and Son, among other works.

Wimmer has written for publications such as The Nation, The New York Times, and The Believer.^[4] She teaches translation at Princeton University.^[4]

Wimmer received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant in 2007 and the PEN Translation Prize in 2009.^[4] She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2008^[4] for her translation of 2666^[3] and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010.^[4]

Spanish writer Gabriela Ybarra's The Dinner Guest, in Wimmer's translation, was nominated for the 2018 International Booker Prize.

• 2666

• The Savage Detectives (Los detectives salvajes)
• The Third Reich (El Tercer Reich)

• A Little Lumpen Novelita (Una novelita lumpen)
• Antwerp (Amberes)
• The Spirit of Science Fiction (El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción)
• Woes of the True Policeman (Los sinsabores del verdadero policía)
• Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas (Sepulcros de vaqueros)
• Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003
• The Secret of Evil (El Secreto del Mal)

• You Dreamed of Empires (Tu sueño imperios han sido)
• Sudden Death (Muerte súbita)
• Now I Surrender to You and That Is All (Ahora me rindo y eso es todo)

• Space Invaders
• Voyager: Constellations of Memory
• The Twilight Zone (La dimensión desconocida)

• The Way to Paradise (El paraíso en la otra esquina)
• Letters to a Young Novelist (Cartas a un joven novelista)
• The Language of Passion

• The Secret of Fame (El secreto de la fama)
• So Many Books (Los demasiados libros)

• Kensington Gardens (Jardines de Kensington) by Rodrigo Fresán
• Father and Son: A Lifetime by Marcos Giralt Torrente
• Dirty Havana Trilogy (Trilogía sucia de La Habana) by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
• Delirium (Delirio) by Laura Restrepo
• The Dinner Guest (El comensal) by Gabriela Ybarra